Ordinarily, you have go through a good deal of tapping and swiping to get back into your smartphone once it idles. The new Moto X is built to cut back on some of those gestures.

Dennis Woodside, chief executive of Motorola Mobility, held the new Moto X at a launch event in New York.

Bloomberg News

Pick up the phone or flip it over and the Moto X will briefly show you the time and your messages before fading back to black. That is seemingly simple stuff, but it’s exactly what prods people to constantly check their phones. One other devices, you have to tap and swipe your way to the information.

This is where smartphones are headed – certainly where Google is nudging them — to be smart and anticipate what we want.

A smartphone that is always standing at the ready could be a battery killer, but Motorola addressed that through some hardware enhancements, including using lower-power processors while the phone is asleep. Fewer features require buttons to be pressed to activate. For example, twisting the phone wakes up the camera.

The phone’s voice activation also casts off any touching requirement. After training the Moto X to recognize your voice, you say “OK Google now” to tell it what to do. Once the phone wakes up, it can make a call, map out directions or answer questions by doing a Web search, even from across the room. This voice feature is similar to what Motorola showed last week when it unveiled a trio of Verizon Wireless Droid phones. It mimics the commands used to control Google Glass, a wearable computer.

Jim Wicks, senior vice president of consumer experience and design at Motorola, said that being part of Google allowed Motorola to step back, “be more human” and get away from tech specs. “It is easy to just put bigger displays and bigger specs, but we found that people wanted one-hand usability,” he said.

That’s Motorola’s way of saying it didn’t go after a bigger screen or more processing horsepower. The Moto X screen is smaller and has lower resolution than the Samsung Galaxy S4. The camera, at 10 megapixels, also comes up short of what competitors offer. Likewise for the 16 gigabytes of storage. Yet the price, at $199 with a two year contract, is on par with its expensive rivals.

Rick Osterloh, Motorola’s senior vice president of product management, knocked the smartphone industry Thursday for showing a “lack of imagination” that has caused innovation to slow down. He said the Moto X is an attempt to counter the “trend of piling on features” on to Android.

Well, maybe some pile-on is okay. Moto X customers can choose the color and add engraving to the phone. Motorola will ship the phone from its factory in Fort Worth, Texas, in four days or less. If you have buyers’ remorse on the design, return the phone or exchange it free within two weeks. For now, though, only AT&T customers get to customize.

And if you’re nostalgic for those old station wagons, Motorola is planning to launch a wood-backed smartphone in the fourth quarter.